Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops to close

By Geeta Sharma Jensen of the Journal Sentinel

Published on: 1/19/2009

After 82 years in business, Milwaukee's iconic Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops is shuttering its four bookstores, succumbing to the economic downturn and technological changes that are redrawing how people read and shop for books.

Carol Grossmeyer, president of the landmark independent chain, said Sunday the stores will close at the end of the business day on March 31. Two stores - the east side Downer Ave. store and the Mequon shop - are being acquired separately by two Schwartz managers and will reopen under new names, she said.

About 65 employees work in the Schwartz chain. How many will be retained by the new owners remains unknown.

"This has been the most emotional six months of my life, and now it's culminating in a decision that was coming for a while," Grossmeyer told the Journal Sentinel before a special company meeting with employees Sunday evening. "You want to hold onto the bookshops. It feels so much like the fabric of the community. . . . But we really believe that the multiple-store model that we had become, and that had worked so well for us in the 1980s and 1990s, is not feasible anymore."

She expressed a belief that perhaps small, one-store booksellers, filling special needs in neighborhoods and unhobbled by the high overhead of multiple stores, are the future for privately owned bookstores. As in other retail sectors, independent bookstores nationwide have been battling large chains such as Barnes & Noble and online booksellers such as Amazon.com for several years. Many have been operating so close to the bone that they've been unable to survive the added burden of the economic downturn.

Grossmeyer and Rebecca Schwartz, chairman of the company her grandfather founded, had discussed closing the chain earlier in 2008 but decided to see how the holiday season would shape up. However, with the mortgage crisis and the market turmoil, retail sales fell nationally in the last quarter. Sales at Schwartz declined 17% in 2008 on top of a substantial decline the year before, Grossmeyer said.

"We are profoundly saddened," Grossmeyer said, adding she was grateful for the support of her customers and was sorry Schwartz would not be able to serve them at the stores any longer. "But there's some happy ending to the story."

Two of the stores will continue operating under new owners, she said. And though the Schwartz name will be no more, its logo - a sketch of 18th-century diarist and author James Boswell holding a book - will live on.

Daniel Goldin, the general manager of Schwartz, is buying the Schwartz store at 2599 N. Downer Ave. and will use the old Boswell logo for that store, which will be renamed Boswell Book Company.

The company also is in discussions with Lanora Hurley, manager of the Mequon store, to acquire that bookshop. Hurley, who worked at an independent bookstore in Washington, D.C., before joining Schwartz six years ago, plans to call her new store Next Chapter Bookshop after the deal closes.

Goldin, who is buying the Schwartz inventory at Downer, has been in the book business since 1982 when he began working at a publishing house in New York. He came to Schwartz in 1986 and, as head book buyer, was instrumental in the last several years in positioning the stores strategically for its specific audience.

"I am very excited, though a little sad, too, that Schwartz is closing," he said Sunday. "This is a very interesting time to be a book retailer. We know there's a lot of change coming, and I feel that you sort of need to start from scratch to do all the things you need to do to make a retailer work.

"I want to be a community destination. I want to work with local groups and I want to keep our reputation for good author events. I'm going to try to be as clever as possible to get the authors to come. . . . And I plan to work with a lot of Shorewood folk, too. I love the Shorewood customers. I've worked there a lot."

Schwartz has operated at several locations over the years, and just three years ago had five stores. It tried locations in Racine and Bay View but closed them within a year or two of their openings. The Bay View store closed in 2008. The company's current stores are at 17145 W. Blue Mound Road in the V. Richards Plaza in Brookfield, on Downer Ave. in Milwaukee, 10976 N. Port Washington Road in Mequon and 4093 N. Oakland Ave. in Shorewood.

Founded in 1927

The chain was founded in 1927 (two years before the Great Depression began) by Harry W. Schwartz, who returned to Milwaukee after working in a Los Angeles bookstore for several years after high school. He opened his own shop on Downer Ave. and very shortly became known for the books he chose to sell. He was, for example, one of the first champions of then-controversial 20th-century authors such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. He also sold erotically charged literature, including "Ulysses" by James Joyce and "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller.

His son, David, who took over in 1972, was just as opinionated, savvy and defiant, believing in a free and open exchange of ideas. Under the younger Schwartz's guidance, the chain grew and opened multiple stores throughout the 1980s. It also prospered through some of the tremendous changes in the bookselling business, such as the advent of the mega-booksellers.

Schwartz positioned his stores in neighborhoods where the big stores could not build. He carefully selected books tailored to his local customers, and he also began offering coffee and other soft items in his stores. His biggest weapon, though, was the readings with big-name authors that Schwartz became known for in the book industry nationally.

Under his stewardship, Schwartz's parent company, Dickens Books Ltd., also began an operation that sells business books, which today is a separate division, 800-CEO-Read. Grossmeyer said the family will retain that division, which remains profitable.

David Schwartz died in June 2004. By that time, bookselling had already become tougher, with readers buying books online instead of from bricks-and-mortar stores. Grossmeyer, whom he married in 1983, took over as president after his death and faced more changes. She said booksellers must now also contend with digital books.

"David successfully led us into the new century fighting for our ground," Grossmeyer said. "But the winds of change were gales, and at the time of David's passing, we were a wounded business. The most recent economic crisis was, for us, the final blow."